


nightlight

by rudimentaryflair



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canonical Character Death, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Light Angst, M/M, Nightmares, im weak for soft!zosan ok, some gratuitous ratatouille references, this is self indulgent as fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24543730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudimentaryflair/pseuds/rudimentaryflair
Summary: The third floorboard in the hall always creaks, so Zoro makes sure to step over it as he makes his way to the kitchen, past the living room where he keeps to the tradition of frowning slightly at the horrendous couch Sanji always insists ismauve.The sight of the pink monstrosity almost makes him feel a little better, but not by much, so he continues his shambling trek to the booze cupboard, something heavy and oppressive threatening to crush him from the inside out.All plans of getting shitfaced halt, however, because there’sSanji,there, in the kitchen, awake, bent over a tray of cookie dough with his hands covered in flour at two in the goddamn morning.
Relationships: Roronoa Zoro/Vinsmoke Sanji
Comments: 28
Kudos: 317





	nightlight

**Author's Note:**

> I just want someone to hold me when I go down to the kitchen for a midnight snack, okay, is that to much to ask? Anyways, enjoy some ZoSan bonding at 2am. 
> 
> Not betaed - we die like men.

It strangles him one night, a bygone shadow come to trespass in his dreams. The memories pelt him like raindrops, wash him out of his sleep and he lays there, stiff and gasping. He can still feel the phantom pain of a bokken hitting him squarely on the head, of stairs crushed against the back of his neck.

Under all the nerves and the nightmares, Zoro is tired. Not the kind of tired behind his eyes after a long day at the dojo, but the kind that settles in his bones, digs its claws into a twelve-year hollow and sinks in _deep._

Twelve years ago, they buried Kuina. Dug the hole, placed the body, filled the hole with dirt again. Now, staring at the austere ceiling of the bedroom, Zoro’s head is an open grave, the stitches of a once closed wound wearing out, and he is tired, so tired of having to tuck his skeletons back into their cold beds in the ground.

Beside him, Sanji has burrowed under the blankets, his head completely hidden beneath the sheets. Zoro steps out of bed, stuffing his pillow under his side of the blanket so it looks like he’s still sleeping under it. The Sanji lump doesn’t move when he slips out of the room quietly.

Normally, there are two ways Zoro deals with nights like these: by cutting the shit out of something, or by getting wasted. When he was still living in that giant mansion with Mihawk in the middle of nowhere, it was easy to bring out the spare training dummies from the cellar and make quick work of them in the woods out back. But Sanji’s flat is in a quaint complex chock full of residents, and he’s not sure destroying training equipment in the middle of the night is good tenant behavior.

He could drop by the dojo, but it’s definitely closed. Mihawk gave him a set of keys to the place, but Mihawk also lives there, and Zoro doesn’t think he’ll appreciate being woken up at 2 AM.

Option two, then.

The third floorboard in the hall always creaks, so Zoro makes sure to step over it as he makes his way to the kitchen, past the living room where he keeps to the tradition of frowning slightly at the horrendous couch Sanji always insists is _mauve._ The sight of the pink monstrosity almost makes him feel a little better, but not by much, so he continues his shambling trek to the booze cupboard, something heavy and oppressive threatening to crush him from the inside out.

All plans of getting shitfaced halt, however, because there’s _Sanji,_ there, in the kitchen, awake, bent over a tray of cookie dough with his hands covered in flour at two in the goddamn morning.

It’s dark; the only source of light in the flat is a warm, orange glow emanating from the oven, painting the walls with eerie shadows of the furniture. Dirty bowls crowd the countertops. The kettle is plugged in beside several black tea bags. There’s a full tray of slightly flattened dough balls on the counter, and Sanji looks like he’s almost halfway through with a second tray.

Sanji must feel him in the room because he stiffens and turns around.

They stare at each other.

Sanji looks about as horrible as Zoro feels. In the dark, his face seems drawn and gaunt, like a starving man’s, skin sallow in the oven light. His hair is warped; he’s been yanking at it with his hands, the strands crazed and sticking up at the sides.

Sanji clears his throat first. “What are you doing up this late?” he asks.

The fingers of his left hand clench. “I could ask you the same question,” Zoro says.

Sanji’s eyes dart to his fingers, then back to Zoro’s face, and Zoro knows it’s not lost on him, just his own troubles aren’t lost on Zoro.

“Sake’s in the cabinet,” Sanji says finally, after a long pause. He turns back to the counter. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Zoro does.

Sanji fills the second cookie tray while the oven is preheating. From his spot at their tiny round table in the kitchen, Zoro watches as he pulls out a box-like machine from one of the cupboards ― Zoro has no idea what it’s called ― and dumps a bowl of sticky rice into it. He knows what it does, though; Sanji uses it to make ice cream mochi for Chopper or tangerine _daifuku_ for Nami sometimes, and on good days, if Zoro hasn’t pissed him off too much, Sanji will also make him mochi with red bean paste.

After putting the cookies in the oven, Sanji leaves the kitchen. Zoro spends the minutes he’s gone watching the machine knead the rice into a knobbly ball with mild fascination, sipping at his sake intermittently.

He’s startled when Sanji sets Wado by him, so that it leans against the table.

His mouth is suddenly very dry. “Thought swords weren’t allowed in the kitchen.”

“Neither are mossy neanderthals,” Sanji retorts, returning to his station at the counter. “Yet here we are.”

Zoro barely catches the tail end of his response, all the breath slowly pushing out of him as he takes in the way the kitchen can light glances off hilt, making the scabbard look pearly with age. Instinctively, he grabs for the sake again.

“Hey, easy with that shit,” Sanji snaps. Zoro doesn’t respond, intent on drowning himself in alcohol, and Sanji wrenches the bottle out of his hand in an almost violent gesture. “I said _easy.”_

The words and tone are angry, but the way his eyebrows furrow together in concern suggests something else. Sanji seems caught, the bottle still hovering in the air in his grip. After a pause, he sets the bottle back down on the table and turns around briskly, muttering, “No wonder we’re so fucking broke, half our money is spent on booze.”

Mind pleasantly muddled by the sake, Zoro leans back in his chair, watching Sanji’s back as he works. The cook is restless; even after he puts the cookie pans in the oven, Sanji can’t seem to stay in one place for more than a minute. He keeps checking on the cookies, the mochi, the tea kettle. He wipes the already spotless counter twice, grabs a pack of cigarettes from the cupboard only to set them down, and then pick them up again. He looks pensive and uneasy, like he’s waiting for an impending storm.

“Rat,” Zoro says the eighth time it happens, wanting to wipe the despondent look off his face. It works; Sanji shoots him a confused look.

“What?”

“You’re like the rat from that movie,” Zoro says. “The chef rat,” he clarifies, when Sanji looks even more perplexed, “with all that scuttling around.” They’d watched it during one of the weekends Sanji had off; Sanji made fun of him for not being able to pronounce the name of the movie before immediately becoming enthralled by the animated cooking.

He’d cried at the end, Zoro remembers fondly, though he’d never admit it if anyone asked.

Sanji, as though aware of his thoughts, scowls. “I do not _scuttle.”_

“Do too.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“I am not doing this with you,” Sanji says, threateningly brandishing a wooden spoon. He half expects Sanji to whack him over the top of the head with it, and Zoro is unexpectedly reminded of Kuina, who would’ve done exactly that with her bokken. They’re both rather alike: fiery, determined, annoyingly insufferable ─ the strongest and most inspiring people he’s ever met.

He realizes, then, that Kuina may not have completely left him yet.

He notices that he’s gone quiet for a while, and that Sanji’s just been watching him with an unreadable expression, not saying anything. Awkward, Zoro quickly looks around the kitchen, itching to do something.

His eyes settle on the oven. “Can I help?”

Sanji hums, fingers tapping the counter where he’s leaning against it. “Depends.”

“On?”

“Whether you want to be eating cookies or charcoal briquettes.”

Zoro scowls. “I don’t even like cookies,” he says, a little stung, sounding childish even to his ears.

Sanji’s face softens, and he pushes himself away from the counter. “Come here,” he says. “I’ll let you do the mochi.”

Mochi in its beginning stages, as it turns out, is a complete nightmare.

For one thing, it’s incredibly sticky, attaching itself to Zoro’s hands like a gooey parasite. Sanji, the bastard, doesn’t even bother helping him, content with just laughing at Zoro as he tries vainly to unstick himself from the gelatinous mess.

“The potato starch,” Sanji gasps between chortles as Zoro wrestles with what is essentially a giant piece of gum. “You have to cover it with potato starch.”

Zoro glares at him, betrayed. “You couldn’t have told me that before?!”

“Hey, you wanted this,” Sanji says gleefully, and then easily dances away from a kick aimed at his shins. Zoro barely manages to restrain himself from lobbing the mochi at Sanji’s head; he knows the cook would kill him for treating food that way.

Eventually, after taking his cookies out of the oven, Sanji steps in and extricates Zoro from the evil mochi mound. He covers it with a fine white powder ─ the potato starch ─ and kneads it with decidedly more success. He shows Zoro how to form mochi balls by tucking a corner of the mound carefully under his hand and pinching off the top with his thumb and forefinger, and they make them side-by-side with their shoulders brushing, the cook’s perfectly even and smooth, Zoro’s all misshapen. Sanji keeps darting glances at the bottle of green food coloring by the spice rack, only stopping after Zoro growls, “Don’t even try it, I’ll slice your legs off.”

Zoro is fully prepared to just pop the mochi into his mouth when they finish, but then Sanji pulls out one of those skillets with the raised marks and tosses a few balls into it. They each make a sizzling noise when they hit the pan, and abruptly, Zoro remembers why he’s awake at two in the morning.

“What are you doing,” he asks, just for the sake of asking. He is instantly aware of the sword leaning against the kitchen table.

“It’s _yakimochi,”_ Sanji responds, almost casual. “You used to eat it with her after training, right?”

Of course Sanji knows, the thoughtful bastard. Zoro didn’t even realize Sanji remembered; he doesn’t know when he told Sanji about Kuina, just that he has. It’s one of those old, old memories, the kind he can feel but can’t recall exactly, like his first class at the dojo, how he met Kuina. When he fell in love.

“Right,” Zoro answers, and doesn’t say anything else.

Sanji flits away to take his cooled cookies off the pan while Zoro stares at the mochi puffing up on the pan. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sanji fill a little dish with soy sauce. He plates the _yakimochi_ and sets it on the kitchen table beside the newly filled cookie jar. He sits, a mug of black tea in his hand.

In a trance, Zoro takes the seat across from him, eyeing the mochi warily. A sugar cookie slowly works its way into Sanji’s mouth as he looks at Zoro, expectant.

The first bite crunches nicely in his mouth, the mochi slightly sweet and salty from the soy sauce. It’s delicious, just like everything the cook makes, but he doesn’t think he has the words to express that. Instead, he dips some more mochi into the sauce and chews it thoughtfully, nostalgia rising and ebbing like waves in his chest. It’s plain, almost boring; it makes him think of simpler times. If he closes his eyes, he could pretend he’s sitting in the sorghum fields behind the dojo after class, playing janken with Kuina for the last piece.

Sanji is staring into his tea. He eats another cookie, contemplative, and it strikes Zoro that everything feels very practiced, like Sanji is just going through motions. He wonders how many times Sanji’s done this, woken up in the middle of the night to bake sugar cookies. Come to think of it, he’s never seen the cookie jar empty.

“Well?” Sanji asks after a long pause, like he does every time Zoro eats his cooking.

Zoro chews slowly, savoring, something he rarely ever does with. “S’good,” he replies, like he does every time Sanji asks.

 _“S’good,”_ Sanji mocks. “I can’t believe I’m dating a brute with no taste,” he grumbles, though there’s no edge to it.

Just for that, Zoro makes sure to shovel the last of the mochi into his mouth, munching on it obnoxiously with his mouth open to try and get a rise out of the cook, but Sanji just smiles into his tea, a little sad.

“But,” he says quieter, more to himself than Zoro, “there are worse people to love.”

“Oi, Marimo,” Sanji says, fingers stilling in Zoro’s hair. Zoro makes a slightly displeased noise, but he looks up questioningly.

They hadn’t made it back to the bed. Hell, they hadn’t even made it to the horrible pink couch, Sanji sitting with his back against it on the floor and Zoro collapsed on top of him. They’d both been too tired to do the dishes, leaving them in dirty piles in the sink to do in the morning. It’s still way too late, or too early, and Zoro is perfectly content where he is between Sanji’s legs, sleepy and warm.

Sanji resumes stroking his hair. “This is going to sound strange, but humor me. What am I?”

“Mm. A dumbass.” He’s trying to get a rise again, but Sanji doesn’t snap at him, just says, “Yes, and?”

Dimly, Zoro has a feeling that Sanji’s looking for something more, but he isn’t sure what. He has an inkling, a guess; he knows about Sanji’s thing with food, his trauma with starvation, but this is something different. Something more personal.

“You’re a cook,” he says.

“Dumbass and a cook,” Sanji repeats, almost teasing, but the strange note to his voice stays. “That’s it?”

“That’s a lot,” Zoro says. He doesn’t like how Sanji says that, like being a cook ─ his livelihood, his soul, his reason for being ─ is too small. He tugs Sanji’s hand from his hair and presses the tips of his fingers to his lips. “You’re Sanji.” Then, “It’s not like you to let me decide who you are.”

“No, it’s not,” says Sanji softly. “Just one of those days, I suppose.”

Zoro waits for more, but nothing comes. That’s okay, he thinks, tracing a thumb over the curve of Sanji’s wrist. Sanji will tell him when he’s ready, and even if he won’t, it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change what they have here now, in their apartment, in the darkness of the living room.

After a moment, the hand on his mouth slips to his chin. Zoro tilts his head up to meet Sanji’s lips and they kiss, slow and soft, like sinking into a dreamless sleep.

Zoro pulls away too soon, making a face. “Fuck, that’s gross,” he says. 

Sanji raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“How much sugar is in those things?” Zoro demands, cross. There's cookie residue in his mouth, burning and sickly sweet.

Sanji just shakes his head, laughing. “No taste,” he says, bending down to kiss Zoro again, this time on the furrow between his eyebrows.

In the kitchen, Wado leans against the table, resting.

**Author's Note:**

> _“Yakimochi is grilled or broiled mochi or pounded rice cake. Traditionally, it is prepared using a small charcoal grill, but in modern times a gas grill can be used. During the time of the Autumn Moon, it is traditional to eat fresh yakimochi while sipping sake and enjoying the view of the full moon.” - Wikipedia_
> 
> I know these types of fics typically have a big, emotionally charged moment where the characters spill their guts to each other, but I've always really liked reading stories where two characters just spend time together and enjoy being in each other's space. Also, I imagine that Zoro and Sanji are still at that stage in their relationship where they're not comfortable with sharing their deepest secrets and traumas yet.
> 
> EDIT: I changed the summary because it was bothering me. 
> 
> You can find this fic [here](https://rudimentaryflair.tumblr.com/post/620028015090565120/nightlight-rudimentaryflair-one-piece-archive) on Tumblr. I'm rudimentaryflair!


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